


the color of a sunburn

by quensty



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: I don't know the tag to say they met as children so... ... they meet as children, M/M, a summer fic with children and fairs and almost zero plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 12:13:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11714178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quensty/pseuds/quensty
Summary: Nathaniel thinks to himself that he kind of looks like he could give Nathaniel a sunburn by just touching him, pale hair and sweat-shined skin.





	the color of a sunburn

**Author's Note:**

> for: @wesawbears on tumblr for the @aftgexchange! you asked for either lailalvarez w ice-cream or andreil summer road trip and i..............did not deliver. this is andreil where they meet as children at a county fair that BREIFLY involves ice-cream. but i hope it's still to your liking! enjoy the rest of your summer!

There’s a boy standing in the shade of an ice-cream booth, shoulders against the plaster. Nathaniel alternates between watching groups of people holding bags of food and overstuffed toys, listening to music he’s only ever heard at late-night diners while he and his mother cut their hair with steak knives, and looking back at the boy.

He’s unremarkable and, as far as Nathaniel can tell, nothing unlike the countless other people he’s seen going back and forth, but Nathaniel’s attention keeps drifting back towards him. There’s a familiarity in the way he’s looking to merge into the crowd, like chameleon scales distorting.

The sun is still high, heat and the smell of sunscreen inflating an airtight balloon in Nathaniel’s chest, and he knows his mother doesn’t like Nathaniel talking to strangers. She told him she’d be back by sunset before leaving him on the fairground: close to their rendezvous point and crowded enough to lose someone in. He was meant to blend in while she negotiated with a man who could make their history nearly untraceable and, possibly, hand them passports for a ride out of the country, or she was going to corner him into a bathroom stall and hold a gun to his chin.

Either option was likely, and Nathaniel was told to run at the first sign of trouble.

He should walk away. He should think of what will happen to him if his mother finds him making conversation with a stranger. He should stop staring.

Nathaniel gets up from the metal bench and crosses the pavement.

When he starts getting close, the boy glances at him sideways, considering. His clothes look more worn and washed out than even Nathaniel’s, a baseball cap that’s ripping open. It takes Nathaniel a moment to realize it’s probably for the sun, because even in the shade, there’s a hot stripe of skin on his face. Nathaniel thinks to himself that he kind of looks like he could give Nathaniel a sunburn by just touching him, pale hair and sweat-shined skin.

“Here,” says Nathaniel, thrusting the plastic bowl in his hands towards the other boy. “You’d never manage to steal any, anyways.”

He’s trying to keep the expression off his face, though he’s bad at it. His face twists, surprise making his spine go tense like a flinch. He blinks.

“That was your plan, wasn’t it?” says Nathaniel. “You’ve been waiting around for a while now.”

The boy doesn’t respond, flicking his fingers lazily towards Nathaniel’s hands. “What did you do to it?”

Nathaniel scowls. “Nothing. I don’t like these sorts of things. Candy-like things.”

“Half of it is melted,” he says, which is true. Nathaniel has been sitting around with it in the sun, leaving his hands sticky with sugar and water.

“Do you want it or not?” says Nathaniel, annoyed.

After a beat, the boy reaches out and shoves a spoonful of melted chocolate ice-cream into his mouth. Then, before Nathaniel can even think of walking away, he smacks his hand so hard against Nathaniel’s chest he stumbles backwards a little. In his hand is two sets of folded yellow tickets.

“Wait, what am I -- hey, _wait_!” Nathaniel reaches out and grabs him by the arm before he can leave. The boy thrums, startled, before jerking his arm back. “What am I supposed to do with these?”

The boy looks at him like he thinks he’s stupid. “I don’t care.”

“Where did you get them?”

“None of your business.”

“I don’t want them.” Nathaniel shoves his arm forward. “I can’t use them.”

“It’s not like they ask for a receipt.” Hands in his pockets, a calm lean of his shoulders, an uninterested tone, but there’s a curious glint in his eye. Like the glare of sunlight on sharp glass. “Why can’t you use them?”

“I’m supposed to be here when my mom gets back. And I’ve never gone on a ride before,” says Nathaniel, then, because that came out more honest than he meant it to, “not alone, anyways.” Nathaniel considers his options -- his mother’s angry hands or a fistful of stolen fair tickets -- and goes, “Have you?”

The boy stares.

“I’m Alex.”

Another heartbeat of silence, then, “Andrew,” before Andrew snatches the tickets out of Nathaniel’s hands. He doesn’t wait to see if Nathaniel is following before he’s walking away.

 

.

 

Andrew is scared of heights, though he doesn’t want to admit it. They pass by the rollercoasters entirely. Instead, Andrew drags him into a teacup and spins them until Nathaniel’s knee is knocking into the metal door. When they step off, he’s still dizzy with it, uneasy and stumbling his way through the gate. He’s laughing so hard he can feel it like a burn in his gut.

Then there are other things.

“Never been to a show before, either?” Nathaniel turns to Andrew, who’s squirting lukewarm water from a plastic bottle onto his shoulders. Nathaniel was right about the baseball cap: his arms are an angry, sun-flushed color that match his cheeks. ( _You could’ve worn sunscreen_ , Nathaniel had said to him earlier, watching how Andrew poked at it and winced. _If you know you burn so easy._

The petting zoo had been Nathaniel’s idea, just because he thought the face Andrew made when he said it was funny. Now, a goat was chewing on Andrew’s shirt sleeve and licking at the sunburn on his hands. Andrew hissed through his teeth.

Right when Nathaniel said it, Andrew threw all the grass and crackers he had in Nathaniel’s face.)

“No,” Nathaniel looks at him. “And I don’t think you have either.”

“No.”

“But I think I like it,” Nathaniel thinks of what he might’ve been doing otherwise. Metal benches. Melting ice-cream. Looking over his shoulder every two minutes. Instead, he’s in a striped tent that smells of a carnival -- elephant dung and sawdust and frying oil -- while barkers start their call for feats of strength, for derring-do, for a night of love out among the stars, and Nathaniel goes, “Thank you. For showing me,” and Andrew does look at him properly that time.

 

.

 

At some point, one hour slips into two, then falls into three which suddenly becomes four, and to be honest, there’s not much that Nathaniel can tell you about any of them that didn’t involve Andrew.

Free bags of popcorn that make both of their fingertips slippery with salt and butter. Nathaniel sucking the meat of his thumb and letting his mouth curl, a brief flash of a smile, when Andrew gives him a disgusted look. There’s a house of mirrors, sunshine reflecting from glass to glass. There’s a haunted house that impresses neither of them. There’s --

There’s a pier, down past the booths, where the water is so clear Nathaniel can see through it like a thin sheet of glass. Where Andrew sits down and watches, always watching, the boats and the bees and the sun’s setting glow and the way the water washes up the sand.

“I haven’t,” Andrew says.

By this point, Nathaniel has completely forgotten about any conversations. The hours have passed, leaving Nathaniel constantly scanning the area. It feels like a colored screen has been pulled over the entire town, leaving it lazy and orange. When he realizes Andrew said something, he spares him a glance edgewise, lost. “What?”

“If I’ve been on a ride before,” he offers. “The answer is no.”

“Neither have I,” says Nathaniel, absently. “I lied.”

“I know.”

Goosebumps seem to rise on Nathaniel's skin, as if Andrew said it against his neck. There’s too many open secrets here, spilling into the pier and entangling as if they’re shoelaces. ( _It’s all an illusion_ , Andrew had said earlier, the both of them shoulder-to-shoulder as a man a few feet away had an entire crowd delighted with pretty tricks of his wrist, cards in the air. _A ploy, distracting you from whatever they don’t want you seeing._

 _So like throwing a vase in the air while you run in the other direction_ , said Nathaniel, angling his chin to look at him, just as Andrew agreed, _like wearing a cheap mask._ )

“I have to go,” Nathaniel says abruptly.

Andrew, cross-legged in the grass, nods.

 

.

 

Nathaniel falls asleep sometime on the car ride to the airport. Sometime between the sun dipping past the horizon and stars appearing like pinpricks in the night sky. He doesn’t dream of Andrew, but he is the first thing he thinks of when he wakes up. Blonde hair under a red cap, the color of a sunburn.

“Alex.” It’s his mother’s voice, stilling the snapshots of sensation: the taste of powdered sugar, the champagne lightness of laughing, the way the pier gleamed like water rushing over jagged rocks. “Alex,” she says again. “Abram. Wake up. We have to go.”

So Nathaniel wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me at quensty.tumblr.com if you're into that sort of thing


End file.
